Fall is early!

The weather has changed to wet and cool. Fall is in the air. There are a few signs that summer is over and we have them all as of today. The fireweed is at the top, the cabbages are ready to go and today is the first day of school.

Here are a few pictures of the season as well as one of Dominik about to enter the school.

I hope everyone is well!

Who flipped the switch?

I had heard about how abruptly summer ends here, but it has totally shocked me. I had been riding my bike to work in shorts and a t-shirt since the middle of May......come to think of it, it started abruptly, too.........but this week we switched gears. I needed a sweater yesterday! It's only August 10th. I have come to expect August as being another hot summer month, but it's not that way here. August brings much cooler mornings and the daytime high is rarely past 70. July had morning temps around 55-65 F, but we are now firmly in the low 40 F range. What a rapid change!

The daylight has been amazing. We have really enjoyed watching the days stretch out and it's nice to have those long summer days. You can literally play cards outside or garden until 1 am and never need a light. That too, has been disappearing. We are back to having full night and it seems weird. The dark is now beginning at around 10:30 and it is staying dark until around 5:00 am. I get up to work out at 5:45 am and very soon I'll be getting up in the dark. The change is noticeable every day as we are losing about 7 minutes of light daily.

I have been adjusting a teacher from Barrow and he is heading back to the town to prepare for the school year. In Barrow the sun goes down on Nov 20th and doesn't return until Jan 20th! Now that's extreme! I asked him if he does any snowmobiling and he said, "no way! We have polar bears there and they see people as part of the food chain". I would have to say that I sit firmly in my conviction that it is good to live on the edge, but not on the very edge..... It's fun to practice here. I have patients that literally fly in from over 300-400 miles away to see me. Fairbanks is the hub of the interior and when these people come in to shop, they stop in and see us as well. It's interesting to hear stories about living out in the villages or in the bush. We see quite a few people that don't even have running water. You can tell! Haha.

I bought a .22 cal rifle over the weekend and Dominik and I took it to the local range to take a few shots. Dominik is still only 6, but he really likes guns and enjoyed pulling the trigger and pointing it at cans. We are going to go to the Tanana Valley Fair tonight after work.....I'm not that interested since I've been to enough fairs for one lifetime.....but Kari says that it's part of the Fairbanks experience, so we're going. Later this week I am going to take the boys out into the woods and see if we can find some grouse. I bought a small animal license and we're going to continue in the Alaskan experience by seeing if we're cut out to be hunters. I'm going to take Yanik as well, so the birds will have an unfair advantage. He's never been good at being quiet.

We're starting small. I've been on youtube all week learning all the ways to field dress a bird. I don't want to be caught unsure of what to do in case I actually hit one! We're allowed 15 grouse/day, 20 ptarmigan/day and an unlimitted amount of hare. If my shooting is any good, I should be able to get some nice healthy meat for the freezer. We figured we would start small and if we enjoy hunting, maybe next year when we are residents we could go for a deer/caribou/moose, etc. I thought about doing it this year, but we are not residents and it is very cost prohibitive at this point.

Overall, life is great in Alaska. We miss familyand friends of course, but we are thankful for the experiences we are having. I know we'll never regret coming up here, no matter where we end up, but we're planning on staying here for the medium to long term. The biggest shock to living up here was the cost of living and now that Kari is working partime, we have adapted well. Ithink she is really enjoying having a little of her own money and being more independent. My practice has been growing, although it never seems as fast as you would like it to. We had a slow July, but some of that had to do with the high temps and forest fires. Most of July was in the high 80s and we had a record smoke season. The smoke in town was so bad for much of July that it was extremely unhealthy to breath the air and people were supposed to just stay inside if possible. Thankfully it has been raining and the fires are dying down. We saw blue sky for the first time in quite a while this weekend.

More White Mtn Pictures

White Mountains

On July 11th we had yet another new experience. I took Dominik and Yanik and we rode ATVs 7 miles into the White Mountains to stay overnight at Lee's Cabin.

We took after after work on Saturday and headed up the Elliot highway about 40 miles out of town. The scenery along the way was just beautiful. Large rolling hills and lush forests as far as you can see. We arrived at the trailhead and unloaded the trucks and then piled onto the ATVs. I couldn't believe how much stuff we had to cart in there! My buddy had a "meat wagon" and that was sufficient to get all of our overnight supplies into camp.

The trail was pretty bumpy and was certainly a climb in a few spots. We had our guns fairly handy, as this particular area is bear country. I was hoping to see one, but maybe it's better that we didn't with all the little kids.

When we arrived at the cabin we unloaded and then spent the evening enjoying the scenery, playing hide and seek in the woods, and of course eating! For future reference, do not bring potato chips or bags of mini carrots on this trip. The carrots were transformed into soup by the trail and you could imagine what the chips looked like! Nonetheless, we enjoyed spaghetti and even a few nice steaks. The cook...yours truly. The kids had a great time and we loved the fresh air. We never even saw a hint of another person the entire time!

More Denali Pics

Denali

Denali Park

Last weekend we took our new (to us) truck and headed up to Denali. We stayed at the Savage River Campground, 13 miles into the park, hoping for some time away from people. Tourism has been down a lot this year, but even here it was still pretty busy. The campground was really nice, but it's definitely not isolated enough for our tastes! We brought all of our bikes along as well, but the terrain was a little too tough for the kids, so we had to do just a little biking at the Park entrance and through town. Denali is definitely not the best place for little kids to bike, but I loved pounding up and down the mountains!

We enjoyed sleeping 2 nights in our tent, but I'd be lying if I told you I wasn't nervous about grizzlies. We had been told that bears frequent the area and to keep our campsite really clean. I woke up the first night to a growling sound and I shot straight up in bed, but I laughed when I realized it was just Kari snoring a little!

We got a kick out of the Gray Jays, aka camp robbers. Whenever you were eating and turned your back, they were into your food. It was funny. I had them landing on my hand and eating of of my head. They were well trained.

Even though it was 85 degrees in Fairbanks, Denali was cold. We topped out in the 60's, but it was always pretty windy. We enjoyed hiking around and the boys did well on the 1.5 mile savage river loop. We hoped to see Dall Sheep, but weren't lucky enough to see them.

The highlight of the trip was seeing a Griz at the park entrance! He was just sitting in a patch of berries and didn't seem too interested in us. Unfortunately our batteries ran out on the camera before we got any really good pictures. We also enjoyed a dogsled demonstration and have decided to adopt a retired sleddog. I was really inspired by the dogs. They were SO anxious to be chosen to pull the sled!! It was a good reminder to myself to be enthusiastic for each day and to love work. Denali is a place you can find inspiration at every turn.

Next year we are going to go in to Toklat campground.....WAY into the park and really sleep with the bears. Looking forward to getting a lot more wildlife pictures and telling you all about that! We hope to actually see mt McKinley as well. We missed it this year. Only about 1/3 of visitors get to see it b/c it is so big and often hides in the clouds.

I've also included one trailing picture of Dad with one of the baby halibut we caught. When I get better at this, I'll put it with the Valdez pictures where it belongs. Haha.

Valdez Pictures

July 09

July was an exciting month for us! We took mom and dad to Valdez to tour the town. Valdez is beautiful and nestled right in the mountains. Kari, grandma and the boys went on a glacier and wildlife boat tour and Dad and I went on a halibut charter. I found out that I was a prairie boy. After 3 hours in choppy water on the way out to the Gulf of Alaska I was as green as could be. Knowing we were going to be out on the water for another 5-6 hours fishing, I had a hard time thinking about anything but just not throwing up in front of everyone. Haha. I had heard all the stories about fishing in Alaska and filling your freezer with halibut for the winter, so I had an agenda. I was goal oriented and planed on getting my limit of 2 halibut.....and 2 big ones at that. We saw several fish over 100 lbs on the dock and that is what I was going to get! Better yet, father was fishing too and there was no way for him to get his fish back to Canada, so I had dreams of 300-400 lbs of halibut for my freezer.

We dropped lines and I waited for my first Alaskan monster. I didn't wait long. About 20 mins. in I hooked one and fought like a dog ( I thought) to get him to the surface. He pulled so hard I imagined he must be 60-100 lbs! I'd never felt anything like this one my line! Finally he surfaced

and we brought him on board.....all 18 lbs of him. Well, you're only allowed to keep 2, so of course I threw him back......why would I take him when I could snag a 100 pounder?? As luck would have it, that was my only bite all day. All the charters had a strange day and very few fish were brought in by anyone. Dad did manage to catch 2 15-20 pounders, so we kept those and had a few feasts before they headed back to Canada, but the freezer remained bare.

Speaking of bear....we did have a friend who brought us a quarter of bear so that is in our freezer now, but it is a little different and I'm the only one who eats it....although Yanik loves the hunter sticks. Another friend contributed about 10 lbs of moose and that is a favorite. We love it!

Summer Stuff 2009

Well, it's August 1st and we have been doing all kinds of new activities and I haven't stopped to talk about any of them at all!

My daughter Samantha came up for 3 weeks and at the same time we had my parents come and visit, so we had a house full of people. Our house has only about 800 sq. feet of living space upstairs, so it's really more of a cabin than a motel.

While our family was here, we decided to really start exploring Alaska, starting with Fairbanks. We visited Chena Hot Springs first. It was really buggy there, but the water was great and the kids had a ball. How neat is it to be soaking in the springs while a moose keeps watch over you. We promised my mom some moose dring the visit and we got our fill the first day!

Over the next few weeks we frequented Alaskaland, ate at the Chena Pump House Father's day buffet, checked out the Santa Claus house and the Knotty Shoppe, went to the Botanical gardens and Arctic Museum, too. Mom and Dad also got a chance to visit the Eldorado Gold Mine with Dominik where they panned for gold. On their last night here they went down the Chena River on the Riverboat Discovery tour. I would say they had a busy trip. We spent most of the evenings playing cards in our enclosed porch in the natural light until the wee hours of the night.

One of mom's highlights was taking a picture of her three grandkids at 12:15 am in the back yard...and of course no flash was necessary!